Incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai has obtained over 54 percent votes as 95 percent of some 27,000 polling stations have been counted, the election body announced Saturday.
"Out of total 5,545,149 votes counted so far, Mr. Karzai has secured 3,009,559 or 54.3 percent votes and Mr. Abdullah Abdullah has secured 1,558,591 or 28.1 percent votes," chief officer of the Electoral Commission Daud Ali Najafi told a news conference.
Ramazan Bashardost, by bagging 511,441 or 9.2 percent votes, has secured the third position in the race, Najafi added.
This is the partial result of the complex vote counting of the second presidential election in the post-Taliban country held on August 20 amid tight security.
In the previous partial result of 91 percent of the whole polling stations announced last week, Karzai secured 54.1 percent ballots followed by Abdullah who bagged 28.3 percent and Bashardost stood at third.
The election has marred with fraud allegation as more than 2,000 complaints have been submitted to the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) and dozens of them are serious that according to ECC officials can sway the election's result.
However, the final result, which is scheduled for Sept. 17, will not be published until the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has all fraud allegations inquired.
(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2009)
